Joshua 1:1-4 (New King James Version)
1 After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, it came to pass that the LORD spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying:
2 "Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them--the children of Israel.
3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses.
4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.
1 After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, it came to pass that the LORD spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying:
2 "Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them--the children of Israel.
3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses.
4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.
Contrary to the promise to Abram
in Genesis 12:1-3, there is a condition of obedience as part of this promise to
Joshua. I see a certain similarity to
the unconditional promise to Abram and the covenant we have with God through
Jesus Christ. The "through Jesus
Christ" is important because it is Christ, the representative human, who
makes the covenant with God the Father and, unlike ancient Israel or the human
race as a whole, He will never break that covenant. Under the leadership and Lordship of Jesus
we, flawed as we are, have access to God through that covenant that will never
be broken.
But God's commission to Joshua is
a little different in that it is conditional.
The land was granted (and it is a very large parcel of land) on the
basis of obedience, and that land had not been completely taken by the end of
the Joshua's life. I think I can compare
this with the challenge to make the most of our days on earth, like the old
saying, "life is a gift from God, and what we do with that life is our
gift to God." Jesus echoed this in
His parable of the talents, (Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:11-27) in which the
worst response from the servants charged with investing on behalf of their
master was to bury the money in the ground.
While there is some discussion as to what the "talents"
represent, I think one way to look at it, and at this book, is to ask ourselves
what we are doing with our days and with the opportunities before us, and would
the Lord be pleased with it? A long
series of small acts of obedience to the Lord, committed over a long period of
time, can amount to much. Pray today,
and ask the Lord to reveal the opportunities before you during the course of
your day.
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